How To Quickly Switch Frame Rates on the Panasonic GH5

If you’re someone who constantly shoots at different frame rates with your Panasonic GH5, then you’ll know the struggle of having to switch settings to get the look you go after every time. Let’s say you’re at a sport’s game shooting footage in the cinema standard 24 frames per second. All of a sudden, you want to take a video of a shot of a player making a slam dunk or hitting a home run. To do this, you need to instantly switch your camera’s frame rate, right?

For most cameras like the GH5, this is just not the case. If you want to switch to a higher frame rate, you’ll also have to manually adjust the resolution first, then access the frame rate settings. By the time you’ve changed all your settings, you’ve probably missed the shot. So the question stands – is there a way to quickly switch frame rates on your GH5? According to Youtuber Johnny Amiri, there certainly is, as he explains in the video below.

To be able to quickly toggle between different frame rates, Johnny makes use of the three customizable modes found on the dial on the top of the GH5. For this video, the filmmaker has planned to assign the following setting for each mode:

Once you’ve planned out what settings you want for each preset, it’s time to actually apply them to the custom modes. To start off, ensure that you are in the movie shooting mode. Next, go into your quick settings and choose the shooting setting you want. In this case, Johnny opted to shoot at 4K, 8 bit, 24 frames per second. In addition to the resolution, color depth, and frame rate, you should also adjust any settings you’d want for the preset; settings such as picture profile, shutter speed, and iris.

After fixing your settings, go to the menu and scroll down to the second gear menu. Navigate to Custom Set. Mem(ory), select Custom Set 1 (C1), then press Yes. Now every time you choose to shoot on the mode C1, you won’t have to change your camera settings again.

To create the settings for C2 and C3, just repeat the same process you did for saving the settings for C1, making sure to select the proper shooting mode. For C2, Justin opted to record at 60 frames per second, 8 bit at 4K. If you’re planning on shooting at a frame rate like 120 frames per second for C3, make sure to adjust your resolution accordingly and then enable Variable Frame Rate before saving the settings for the mode.

Apparently, by spending only a couple of minutes to set up your camera properly, you’ll be able to save a ton of time while shooting, and more importantly, you’ll have much better chances to capture the action as it unfolds rather than desperately browsing through your camera menu in another attempt to find a particular setting in the most inappropriate moment.